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Spare £18000 anyone?


CowFish

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It is clearly impossible to justify the cost of this camera :( how can anything cost that much without it being over the top?

I really do get fed up with the high prices we are expected to pay on astro and photographic gear. I know they don't sell in bulk, but that is really no excuse for making you pay many times more than the cost of the constituent parts and decent profit margin :D

Good rantage :(:D

I don't know how much it costs to make, or the margins, so I can't really justify it one way or the other. however, someone, somewhere will buy them in enough quantities to make it worthwhile to the manufacturer. After all, for plenty of people £18K is small change. And, I would assume that this camera is also used in a professional capacity.

If you really want to be outraged, then look here. How does £610,809 for a wristwatch grab you?:p:eek:

Even that is mere pocket change to some. The Louis Moinet Meteoris (a set of 4 watches and an orrery) cost a cools $4.5Million This page talks of a collector paying £3.3Million for a single wristwatch ;):eek::p

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Err I think that's a typo.. 1,800 would be closer the mark.

No, it is eighteen grand. For eighteen hundred you can get an 8300 Atik CCD but not one with the supercooled 36x36mm chip.

Note that four cameras like mine on a kind of mini wasp array would still only cover 30x30mm and cost about ten grand...

With this camera and my little Tak and focal reducer I could image the three belt stars of Orion, M78, the Horse, Flame, Running Man and M42 in a single image.

The chip will be available in an SBIG for about £10K. Do I want one? Course I want one!! Imagine a 9 panel image of Orion with Barnard's Loop, the Meissa Nebulosity, the seven principle stars etc etc, printed out in a huge exhibition space like the Science Museum. Iconic!!

Olly

post-15040-133877768925_thumb.jpg

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No, it is eighteen grand. For eighteen hundred you can get an 8300 Atik CCD but not one with the supercooled 36x36mm chip.

Note that four cameras like mine on a kind of mini wasp array would still only cover 30x30mm and cost about ten grand...

With this camera and my little Tak and focal reducer I could image the three belt stars of Orion, M78, the Horse, Flame, Running Man and M42 in a single image.

The chip will be available in an SBIG for about £10K. Do I want one? Course I want one!! Imagine a 9 panel image of Orion with Barnard's Loop, the Meissa Nebulosity, the seven principle stars etc etc, printed out in a huge exhibition space like the Science Museum. Iconic!!

Olly

Good point, akin to a Hasselblad with a cooler on it.

Still a bit bananas.

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£18k should be quite cheap for pros who are used to custom built and custom designed CCDs. Look at SuperWasp, eight custom built Andor CCDs cameras.

Now where do you pump in the liquid helium?

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People often forget that making CCDs of this size is very hard. You are not just paying for that one silicon wafer which turned out all right, but also for all those which had to be discarded due to faults. Most CCDs come in different grades, depending on the number and type of faults (hot/dead pixels/lines). The very highest grades are WAY more expensive than the lower grade ones. Keeping a large silicon area free from faults is very difficult indeed.

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OK I just did a little sum. I think this will amaze you!

Camera chips by surface area;

Apogee in question, 1296 square mm.

Popular Atik 314L, 84 square mm.

The Atik has a chip surface 15.4 times smaller than the Apogee. Multiply its price by 15.4 and you get £18002, the same as the Apogee.

Note that, while the Atik is a cracking camera, it does not have a technical spec comparable with the very high end Apogee. Note also that the SBIG version comes out at just over half the price per square mm as the popular Atik 314L.

So which is expensive, the 36x36 chip or the 10.2 x 8.3 chip? Milud, I rest my case. Pass me my cheque book, that big chip is looking cheaper by the second!!

(If you bought two carpets and one was 15x larger than the other, might you not expect to pay more for the large one?)

Olly

To check my sum;

Chip sizes 36x36 and 10.2x8.3. Atik price, £1169. Apogee price £18k.

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